Bash: how to copy multiple files with same name to multiple folders - bash

Question

I am working on Linux machine.
I have a lot of files named the same, with a directory structure like this:
P45_input_foo/result.dat
P45_input_bar/result.dat
P45_input_tar/result.dat
P45_input_cool/result.dat ...
It is difficult to copy them one by one. I want to copy them into another folder named as data with similar folder names and file names:
/data/foo/result.dat
/data/bar/result.dat
/data/tar/result.dat
/data/cool/result.dat ...
In stead of copy them one by one what I should do?

Answer 1

Using a for loop in bash :
# we list every files following the pattern : ./<somedirname>/<any file>
# if you want to specify a format for the folders, you could change it here
# i.e. for your case you could write 'for f in P45*/*' to only match folders starting by P45
for f in */*
do
# we strip the path of the file from its filename
# i.e. 'P45_input_foo/result.dat' will become 'P45_input_foo'
newpath="${f%/*}"
# mkdir -p /data/${newpath##*_} will create our new data structure
# - /data/${newpath##*_} extract the last chain of character after a _, in our example, 'foo'
# - mkdir -p will recursively create our structure
# - cp "$f" "$_" will copy the file to our new directory. It will not launch if mkdir returns an error
mkdir -p /data/${newpath##*_} && cp "$f" "$_"
done
the ${newpath##*_} and ${f%/*} usage are part of Bash string manipulation methods. You can read more about it here.

Answer 2

You will need to extract the 3rd item after "_" :
P45_input_foo --> foo
create the directory (if needed) and copy the file to it. Something like this (not tested, might need editing):
STARTING_DIR="/"
cd "$STARTING_DIR"
VAR=$(ls -1)
while read DIR; do
TARGET_DIR=$(echo "$DIR" | cut -d'_' -f3)
NEW_DIR="/data/$DIR"
if [ ! -d "$NEW_DIR" ]; then
mkdir "$NEW_DIR"
fi
cp "$DIR/result.dat" "$NEW_DIR/result.dat"
if [ $? -ne 0 ];
echo "ERROR: encountered an error while copying"
fi
done <<<"$VAR"
Explanation: assuming all the paths you've mentioned are under root / (if not change STARTING_PATH accordingly). With ls you get the list of the directories, store the output in VAR. Pass the content of VAR to the while loop.

Answer 3

A bit of find and with a few bash tricks, the below script could do the trick for you. Remember to run the script without the mv and see if "/data/"$folder"/" is the actual path that you want to move the file(s).
#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r -d '' file
do
fileNew="${file%/*}" # Everything before the last '\'
fileNew="${fileNew#*/}" # Everything after the last '\'
IFS="_" read _ _ folder <<<"$fileNew"
mv -v "$file" "/data/"$folder"/"
done < <(find . -type f -name "result.dat" -print0)